The Elites by Natasha Ngan

Author:Natasha Ngan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471401534
Publisher: Hot Key Books

22

The Exploded World

Water and fire; the world seemed to have dissolved into those two elements. As Silver stumbled into the clearing, the village opening up before her, she saw that fire had claimed everything, latching onto the buildings, the trees. The people. And still the rain poured, as though the gods above were trying to put out the flames that had licked suddenly across the world, eating it alive.

She stood at the lip of the clearing, dragging breath into her lungs, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. Bits of burning things floated down through the air, blurring the clearing into a smear of grey and green and orange and black. They brought with them the acrid stench of ash and melted metal, and when Silver licked her lips she found them sour on her tongue. The taste was strong, like a punch to the gut, and she knew then with absolute certainty that this was what Yasir had been talking about.

This was the masked men with guns and bombs and other unspeakable weapons. This was the soldiers from Neo burning whole settlements to the ground. This was the killing of all who lived there. This was the Council –

Her Council.

Silver couldn’t see any soldiers in the village yet. She was about to go look for them when she spotted Butterfly, running straight for Leanor and Emeli’s house. Half of it had collapsed.

No, she thought. Not Leanor and Emeli. Not again.

In an instant she forgot about looking for the soldiers and ran after Butterfly. Things snatched at her attention as she went. Screams like fingernails dragging across metal. Shadows blossoming across the burnt ground. She tried to close her ears, and she wanted to close her eyes too, but it was just too horrible, there were too many terrible things. Though her brain tried to block them out her eyes demanded to see them, the images crowding and blotting out everything else, and she was so full of death but still it kept creeping, crawling into her skin and clogging up her veins until her entire being was filled with the horror of it all.

Outside Leanor and Emeli’s house, Silver slowed to a walk. Ahead, Butterfly picked his way through the churned-up wood and broken, jagged slashes of metal, sticking up into the air like animal teeth. She followed him, an uncontrollable shaking rattling through her body now. All around her, the air was filled with sounds. Screams, shouts, cries, and, underneath it all, the rain, still pouring down, making the fires rear up and hiss at it. But above the noise rose an animal cry, so close she felt a shiver dance across her skin.

Leanor or Emeli, she thought. It has to be.

Butterfly had already disappeared into the half of the house that was still standing. As Silver followed, darkness closed round her. Smoke clung to the air, biting her eyes, but she could make out shapes in the grey, and as she moved, objects started to materialise.

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